Do your local officials know what the purpose of government is? Do they judge their actions on how they do what government is supposed to do? Do they know how to find private solutions for things government isn’t supposed to do? How well do they connect and communicate with your community?
The purpose of government, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, is to secure Individual Rights.
Governments, those public functionaries who make up government, are not to be doing anything more than that. And they are certainly not supposed to be doing less than that. A government that attacks Individual Rights is the very thing government is supposed to protect us from. And you are paying to have your rights violated.
There are certainly things government should do. No one has a right to violate the rights of others. If all roads were private, you could be prevented from accessing your property or from going to the grocery store. If your neighbor could do anything they wanted on their property, they might dig a hole that could cause your structure to collapse. Or they could cause smells or toxic fumes that could prevent you from using your property.
It is up to every individual to keep government to its limited role, and to have continual discussions with their public functionaries about that role as situations come up or things change.
It is not the job of government to entice employers or tourists to the area. It is not the job of government to provide education nor to pay for libraries.
It is the job of the community, community leaders, private individuals, and private organizations to do these things and to fund them. When we allow government to do these things, we give public functionaries the right to take money by force from individuals and businesses to pay for these things. We also allow politics and agendas to control these things.
We must keep government limited and we must step up in our communities to do the things that government should not be doing.